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[Suggestion] An idea to fix the Gunslinger's attack speed problem.

Hi,

In this post I'm going to talk about the Gunslinger's attack speed problem, and giving a suggestion to fix it.
The way attack speed currently works with the Gunslinger's ult (with class gem) makes him unfairly benefit from way more attack speed than other classes.
The Gunslinger having extremelty high damage per shot in the first place, him being able to benefit from higher AS% values than other classes makes the problem even bigger. Let's explain with numbers.

As you probably know, the Gunslinger's class gem makes his ult deal a LOT more damage and adds AoE damage as well. As a counterpart, his AS% stat is multiplied by 0.75 when the ult is active to make it more balanced.
This used to work fine, but it doesn't anymore. I'm going to explain why a bit further in this post.

As you also probably know, the AS% stat cap is 300%. Any attack speed over 300% isn't going to change anything.

When the Gunslinger's class gem was created, reaching over 300% AS was impossible, and wasn't thought to ever be possible.
But nowadays... it is. With full attack speed gear, dragons that give attack speed, the new Berserk Battler gem ability and the Lunar Lancer subclass, you can easily reach over 400%AS.

The problem is: the Gunslinger's ult (with class gem) multiplies your AS% stat by 0.75 to make your damage more balanced.
But you can reach over 300%AS now, you can even reach over 400%AS.
400 * 0.75 = 300%AS.
Which means you hit the attack speed cap with the Gunslinger's ult when your AS% stat reaches 400.
Which means the Gunslinger can benefit from having up to 400%AS, while every single other class (except dracolyte and tomb raiser, because they don't use the attack speed stat) only benefits from having up to 300%AS. Poor other classes :(

So, my suggestion is: instead of the Gunslinger's ult (with class gem) multiplying your attack speed stat by 0.75 when the ult is active, making it multiply your attack rate by 0.75.
The attack rate is the speed at which the class attacks without applying the AS% stat. For example, a Fae Trickster with 200% AS will shoot way slower than a Dino Tamer with 200% AS, because her attack rate is lower.
The Gunslinger has a default attack rate of 2.5 (at least that's what Trove Wikia says and that's what I found when I auto attacked on a wall).
So that would be an attack rate of 1.875 when the ult is active with my suggestion.
This way, the Gunslinger would deal the exact same amount of damage as currently but only up to 300%AS, like every other class in the game. Two examples:

Example 1Currently: if you have 200% AS with an attack rate of 2.5, when your ult is active your attack speed goes to 150% and your attack rate doesn't change.
Rate * (AS%/100) = 2.5 * 1.5 = 3.75. (AS% stat starts at 100%, 100% = *1, so that's why it's *1.5 and not *2.5 like it would be for the CD stat)With my suggestion: attack rate goes to 1.875 but your AS% stays at 200.
Rate * (AS%/100) = 1.875 * 2 = 3.75. Exactly the same as before.

Example 2Currently: if you have 400% AS with an attack rate of 2.5, when your ult is active your attack speed goes to 300% and your attack rate doesn't change.
Rate * (AS%/100) = 2.5 * 3 = 7.5.With my suggestion: attack rate goes to 1.875 but your AS% stays at 400. Since the attack speed cap is 300%, you only benefit from 300% AS.
Rate * (AS%/100) = 1.875 * 3 = 5.625. Now it's the same attack speed cap as every other class.

That would make the Gunslinger work like every other class that uses the AS% stat, instead of him having that unfair advantage over them. (Well, actually not "every" class because the Dino Tamer has the opposite problem since your ult with class gem gives +25 AS%, which is useless when you already have over 300% AS without that, but it's a waaaaaay smaller problem than the Gunslinger one so I won't talk about it here.)

So that's it for my suggestion. Sorry if my english isn't perfect, it's not my native language but I tried to do my best. Also, sorry if it looks like a big block of text, I'm not very good at presentation.
Answering with your opinions on this will be highly appreciated, and I'll try to answer to all of them :)

Honestly Gunslinger probably shouldn't get changed, The berserker gem takes a while to ramp up and the lunar lancer subclass is only active ~1/5th-1/6th of the time, Making the former unsuited for short battles and the latter drop off after about 10 seconds, after which gunslinger gets a majority time period of less than ideal damage, to say the least. point is, both of these buffs are not reliable.

Past that, you're also spamming flasks, you can only keep up a constant ult for about a minute, after which your sustain drops substantially. The class fills its role just perfectly in an isolated environment, that being short to medium term high damage with no tanking capabilities, without being strong to the point of being unbalanced, or atleast that would be the case if not for-

The candy barbarian. This guy's ultimate single handedly pushes gunslinger's high end glass cannon kit into a level that makes many people cry for a nerf, and the sad part is most people end up misblaming the gunslinger for it, probably because its the one half of the synergy that's actually dishing out the damage. This is due to (as your OP mentioned) gunslinger's attack speed cap is effectively much higher than every other class because of the class gem's modifier, candy barbarian can feed every class with a close to on-demand 100% attack speed buff, which is great and all, but not so much when only one class can really take advantage of it.

All in all, gunslinger itself is in a fine spot, the mutually exclusive synergy gunslinger and candy barbarian has pushes it into ridiculousness, and i think that's what has to get addressed, not gunslinger. Perhaps if candy barbarian's ultimate provided other players with raw damage instead of attack speed, so every class could take equal advantage of it.

Honestly Gunslinger probably shouldn't get changed, The berserker gem takes a while to ramp up and the lunar lancer subclass is only active ~1/5th-1/6th of the time, Making the former unsuited for short battles and the latter drop off after about 10 seconds, after which gunslinger gets a majority time period of less than ideal damage, to say the least. point is, both of these buffs are not reliable.

It's true that the berserker gem takes a while to ramp up and that the lunar lancer subclass is only active 1/4th of the time at best (active 6 seconds with a 24 seconds cooldown, I just tested it by attacking a big bunch of mobs in U10 without any gems and my lunar lancer subclass activated when the world timer was at xx:xx:00, deactivated at xx:xx:06 and activated again at xx:xx:24), but when the lunar lancer subclass procs, the Gunslinger's damage just FLIES.
Here are two quick videos showing my Dino Tamer's dps, with and without the lunar lancer subclass, and my Gunslinger's dps, with and without the lunar lancer subclass as well. They both have the exact same MD, CD and AS from gear and gems, and they both have Berserk Battler, the only difference being that the dino tamer has more passive AS and the gunsligner has 25 more passive CD, but that's a pretty small difference.
Dino Tamer: https://youtu.be/inPvuOgRWCI
Gunslinger: https://youtu.be/ELliZ7f3vUY
As you can see, the Gunslinger's DPS just goes INSANELY high when the lunar lancer subclass procs (and as I already said it's active up to 1/4th of the time). And even without the lunar lancer's subclass (which means my AS doesn't go over 300%, in fact, it doesn't even reach it, mine is at 291 max, would be exactly 300% I think if I had fully maxed crystal 3 gear, so my suggestion wouldn't change that), the Gunslinger's dps is still higher than the Dino Tamer's one. (and Dino Tamer is far from being a horrible dps, he actually used to be able to speedrun... before all the new AS from crystal update was added and boosted GS even more, making a GS with 0% class bonus boost deal way more than a DT with 50% class bonus boost (and many other classes))
So even without reaching the 300% AS, the Gunslinger's DPS is still one of the bests (as long as your ult is active). And it's not the only good thing about him, he also has extremely good Crowd Control since his ult has a lot of Area of Effect.
Also, my suggestion would only nerf his DPS when his AS% stat is over 300% AS, which is only the case when your lunar lancer subclass is activating.

Originally Posted by Chronozilla

Past that, you're also spamming flasks, you can only keep up a constant ult for about a minute, after which your sustain drops substantially. The class fills its role just perfectly in an isolated environment, that being short to medium term high damage with no tanking capabilities, without being strong to the point of being unbalanced, or atleast that would be the case if not for-

It is true, gunslinger has always been a burst dps, but nowadays if you have decent enough damage you can easily beat even the strongest bosses in the game in under 1 minute. For example this week, over 2100 people cleared DOTM ultra in under 60 seconds.
But even for longer fights, Gunslinger is definitely not the worst dps. By using the valorous vial and keeping your potions for when you have your ult, you can still deal a decent amount of damage. But of course, some other classes will have better long-term DPS, which is good for diversity: Gunslinger is a really good burst dps with good Crowd Control and Area of Effect, but some other classes will do better in long fights.
Also, it makes the gunslinger stupidly good for endgame compared to other classes, since you can clear everything in under 1 minute AND you benefit from way more attack speed than you should. No wonder why here are waaay more end game players using Gunslinger than other classes. Let's give some numbers of the top power ranks of high dps classes:1063 30k+ PR Gunslingers ; 389 30k+ PR Vanguardians ; 296 30k+ PR Dracolytes ; 198 30k+ PR Revenants ; 139 30k+ PR Pirate Captains ; 133 30k+ PR Fae Tricksters ; 123 30k+ PR Ice Sages ; 101 30k+ PR Candy Barbarians (he's not a high dps but I still put it here because of his ult's AS boost that you'll talk about)
And for fights longer than 1 minute, my suggestion wouldn't change much to that, since the long fights are mostly with not end-game players that probably won't hit over 300AS%... and even if they do, it'll only be when the lunar lancer subclass procs. The Gunslinger being able to benefit so much from the lunar lancer subclass compared to other classes is just crazy.

Originally Posted by Chronozilla:814487

The candy barbarian. This guy's ultimate single handedly pushes gunslinger's high end glass cannon kit into a level that makes many people cry for a nerf, and the sad part is most people end up misblaming the gunslinger for it, probably because its the one half of the synergy that's actually dishing out the damage. This is due to (as your OP mentioned) gunslinger's attack speed cap is effectively much higher than every other class because of the class gem's modifier, candy barbarian can feed every class with a close to on-demand 100% attack speed buff, which is great and all, but not so much when only one class can really take advantage of it.

Well, it's true that with Candy Barbarian your AS% is pretty much always at 400% (or 300% when you ult), which makes the Gunslinger really broken with how it currently works. But even with that I don't see a lot of end game players using candy barb (and candy barb is completely out of speedruns, but speedruns only lasts like 8-11 seconds so it doesn't count for the vast majority of the players)
But yeah for longer runs Candy Barbarian can definitely be broken. Which my suggestion would fix without nerfing too much the Gunslinger's DPS without a Candy Barbarian, actually it would only make the lunar lancer's subclass less of a huge boost, that's the only difference it would make since without the lunar lancer subclass activating you're still under 300 AS% (or maybe a tiny bit over if you have full maxed C3 AS gear and Berserk Battler gem activated, and as you already said, these buffs are far from being active all the time.))

Originally Posted by Chronozilla

All in all, gunslinger itself is in a fine spot, the mutually exclusive synergy gunslinger and candy barbarian has pushes it into ridiculousness, and i think that's what has to get addressed, not gunslinger. Perhaps if candy barbarian's ultimate provided other players with raw damage instead of attack speed, so every class could take equal advantage of it.

[/QUOTE]
Eeeehhhh, I'd say having more 30k+ PR Gunslingers than 30k+ PR Vanguardians, Dracolytes, Revenants and Pirate Captains combined together isn't really a "fine spot". And as I already said multiple times, my suggestion would only nerf the lunar lancer's subclass AS boost and the candy barb's AS boost. Outside of these two things, he would have the exact same amount of damage.
I find your Candy Barbarian's ult idea really good though, it would make his ult useful for everyone and would make him a support class useful for every class (and not only Gunslinger).
Also, I'd like to say that I proposed to multiply the AS rate by 0.75 when the ult is active because that's the amount of AS% the ult currently removes, but it doesn't have to be *0.75, it can be *0.8 for example, which would make his damage a bit better than actually but only up to 300% AS.

Also, sorry if my answer isn't perfectly written, I didn't reread myself because I'm getting tired and I'd like to answer to you before going to sleep ^^

This is most likely due to overhyping by the community, pirate captain has more dps than gunslinger, but it not used as much because its clunkier, the other 3 were only recently reworked to be stronger, but because of how everybody STILL views these classes, you barely see them around aside from in the groups that actually do their research. Same reason why you don't see any faes or knights.

The way how GS works in compare to PC. GS is a low effort & big DPS, PC is high effort & big dps. GS have more CH, PC have more CD. GS is long range, PC is close range. It's like with gem boosts, the difference between TOP 1 and TOP 100 is small, so it's not worth to do more "stuff" just for a little more damage.

Most of players will rather play a class with low effort - newbie friendly. People call them a "braindead" classes sometimes.
Meta classes not always require a high effort. Each class is different in skill mechanics, so balancing them is not possible. Every big update some classes gets unintentional buff, some classes not. There is no nerfs in Trove, only buffs.

<- Always has been Fae, always will be Fae, unless there will be a kitty class or a class that rewards skill and allows evasion as well as Fae.

Fae is the best allrounder with its top 1 unmoved point in beeing able to not get damage in first place.

Edit:
@OP - If you want to put GS in line with other classes, then you could aswell lower the MAX attack speed while the ult is active. This sounds far more easier to code than your suggestion. Not that GS actually bother me.

This is most likely due to overhyping by the community, pirate captain has more dps than gunslinger, but it not used as much because its clunkier

No. Used to be the case (and pretty much only in speedruns since Pirate Captain needs a lot of setup and is out of potions ~12-20 seconds after the DOTM spawned (depending on the strat)), but not anymore.
Comparing Pirate Captain's (with 3 ults on the ground before DOTM spawns, first one being thrown 7 seconds before she spawns) and Gunslinger's (I'm 9 AS% from maximum obtainable in the game currently because of not having maxed crystal 3 gear) DPS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFB6lWk4IJM
Results: Pirate Captain did 10.8M average dps for 21 seconds (after that, out of potions) and Gunslinger did 13m average dps for 32 seconds (far from being out of potions and can keep the DPS to that as long as I have potions, so for a bit more than a minute)
Also, note that Pirate Captain needs a lot more setup than the Gunslinger (actually, Gunslinger doesn't need any setup x) ), so for speedruns yeah you can setup as long as you want (and even then Gunslinger's dps is still higher than Pirate captain's), but outside of speedruns you could just start the boss/skulls and hit them instead of setting up.
Also, if you want to get close to Gunslinger's dps with Pirate Captain, you need to drink all of your potions really fast to get your ults on the field. If you really want to max dps on him, your potions are gone in like 20 seconds or even less (vs ~1 minute for the Gunslinger).
And the Pirate Captain has lots of cons compared to the Gunslinger: he's single-target while the Gunslinger has a lot of Crowd Control, his auto attacks are melee while the Gunslinger's are ranged, he doesn't choose who to hit (with the Gunslinger, you just aim what you want to hit, with the Pirate Captain, the turrets shoots at whatever they want... the DOTM's invicible gun for example...), his dps is even more burst-ish than the Gunslinger because he runs out of potions way quicker (and if you drink your potions slower, Gunslinger will do more damage)... and even then, Gunslinger still does more damage.

Originally Posted by Dohep

Trust, once they bring out an update bringing the dark and light stats to the sts you won’t be saying to nerf the gs just saying.

I don't want to nerf GS directly, it just broken that he benefits from up to 400% AS while other classes only benefits from 300% AS.
Also, the Gunslinger would still be a good class. He has good Crowd Control, lots of Area of Effect, and if you know the fight is going to be longer, you can save potions for when you have your ult, use valorous vial when you go under 15 potions to get some potions back and with my suggestion you could even use knight subclass for more potions instead of the lunar lancer's since the AS% boost from the lunar lancer's subclass wouldn't be broken anymore. And you could even trigger the club Fixture that gives you all of your potions back (~61% chance of triggering at least once when you drink 31 potions).
I even proposed to make his AS rate *0.8 instead of his AS% being *0.75, which would make his DPS even higher that currently up to 300 AS%, and he just wouldn't benefit from AS% over 300 anymore (like every other class.)

Originally Posted by Tortorion

Meta classes not always require a high effort. Each class is different in skill mechanics, so balancing them is not possible. Every big update some classes gets unintentional buff, some classes not. There is no nerfs in Trove, only buffs.

There will always be one class that does more DPS in a certain situation that other classes, and it's not necessarily going to be a class that requires high effort to play, that's true.
It's also true that Trove devs doesn't like nerfing classes, they already said it.
But if they leave the Gunslinger exactly how it is, they'd have to buff again all the classes they already buffed to reach a somewhat balanced state, because the difference between the Gunslinger and these other classes is so huge that even a Gunslinger with 0% class bonus boost does more damage than these other classes with a 50% class bonus boost (at least in speedruns (and for those that aren't updated about speedruns, there aren't any candy barbarians in speedruns anymore, so candy barb isn't the problem here)).
The problem with the Gunslinger is just the way his AS% can go higher than it should be able to, it's almost like a bug, not really a bug but definitely unintented (when they created the class gem they didn't think the AS% stat could reach such high values, and they just didn't changed how his class gem works since it got added).
My suggestion isn't a direct nerf, it's just fixing something that doesn't work how it should (and that is just broken). As I already said in this post, I even proposed to make his AS rate in ult *0.8 instead of the AS% being *0.75 to have him make even more damage than currently (which I think is not needed) but just not crazily almost-glitched damage when your lunar lancer subclass procs.

Originally Posted by HolyAlexanderNULL

@OP - If you want to put GS in line with other classes, then you could aswell lower the MAX attack speed while the ult is active. This sounds far more easier to code than your suggestion. Not that GS actually bother me.

Yeah you're right, putting the AS cap at 225 when your ult is active instead of what I said in my suggestion would do the exact same thing, so if it's easier to code (and it probably is), it's a better idea.

Hi, i read your post [ [Suggestion] An idea to fix the Gunslinger's attack speed problem. ]. yet i am reading other reply. but i want to do reply now.
My Main is DT, i am playing DT during 1 year 6 months ~ 2 years.

Dear a lot of GS player.
if you are only do GS, doesn't meet class discrimination. 1 year ago [ 2018.1.13 ], someone [ very popular person, mt friend solved this, so i will not say about it anymore ] said"anything is better than DT."
At the around me and you, a lot of player change their main class any to GS. this is very saddest true.
I think you know the reason. and i think it would be changed.

and a lot of person does't know about max attack speed. i knew it [ i saw it at some article in forum. but others said "changed". and i believe... ]
so my dt have high attack speed and Berserker battler. yes, without any buff and ultimate, my dt have 283% [ if i do upgrade, i will be 291% ].
if i do ultimate, i can be 308%[316%]. and with Beserker battler, 348%[356%]. and with LL sub, i will got 448%[456%]
max dt will lost 256% attack speed. [ p.s. you can say change Beserker battler or AS or Sub, but if i do change it, my dps is not be more strong. ]

In fact, like others, i want to be purple name as DT with my effort. but now it is too hard or can't. just this hope is problem? i don't think so.

Dear ZombiPh0o_.
and i'm thank you, ZombiPh0o_. [ talk about DT, and your video. through you video, i find normal net and ultimate net can be overlap. now i can understand my friend's behavior. <3 ]

now as second main. i am raising Sage. it is very better than Dt.. and i saw knight and used knight. it make me too sad..
i know some class worse than DT [ but at the MD, i think dt is third lowest DPS. chlor and tomb is also terrible. but this is not DPS class [ mean tanker or healer ]. so i think Dt is lowest MD DPS class. ]
sorry about some not-need-chat.

i believe you! GL

And Dear Chronozilla.
you said about Beserker battler need time. then just use PINATA. it is not problem.